Australian federal election 2022

[eddiesmith]

[Pies4shaw]

The ALP had policies in 2019?

[stui magpie]

Nah, they seem to have been clear they've put those policies in the bin, Albanese has been deliberate in that. To suddenly dust them off would ruin them and regardless of what they say they stand for, both parties stand for the same thing. Gaining and keeping power.

[eddiesmith]

Yep, it's how they lost the unloseable election because they all sucked.

People who didn't like the current government realised it would be worse under Shorten.

[Pies4shaw]

This is a fascinating read: https://alp.org.au/media/2046/alp-campaign-review-2019.pdf

I've never read a document of this type. But it's hilarious in its own way. Looking at the summary of findings, they might be improved by further precis, as follows:

Chapter 1: "The ALP ran a bad campaign. It didn't pay attention to internal messaging telling it that the campaign was bad. Bill was a bit of a liability. Scott worked that out and made it a choice of idiot. Our idiot was bigger."

Chapter 2: "The policy platform was an incoherent mess. It pandered to specific interest groups in an unfocused way. It conveyed no compelling argument about why the ALP should be elected."

Chapter 3: "Hubris. Also, nobody noticed - or, frankly, cared, that the LNP had a new leader".

Chapter 4: "Bill wasn't too bad, really, all things considered. A stupid strategy of announcing new spending policies every day clouded the airwaves and created more opportunity for the LNP's new leader (whoever he was) to kick Bill."

Chapter 5: "Queensland hated us a lot. Victoria quite liked us. Poor people in marginal, outer metropolitan seats particularly disliked us. Smart people with good jobs liked us better. We should say something about the Senate, so here's something - it might be a bit of a non sequitur."

Chapter 6: "Our scatter-gun approach to policy confused and bewildered people. There were so many spending plans, people in marginal jobs thought we might break the economy and ruin them. Our climate policy is great - unfortunately, only young voters - who mostly vote for us anyway - and rich old people - who are not our target demographic - liked it. None of the people we needed to get to vote for us liked it. By the way, Clive and Pauline were mean to us."

Chapter 7: "Most of the polling was stuffed. We didn't really pay attention to the bits of internal polling that kept telling us Bill was probably going to lose."

Chapter 8: "Our advertising campaign was useless. We missed the point of having an enhanced digital media capacity, too."

Chapter 9: "Our internal administrative arrangements were dysfunctional."

Chapter 10: "We went 9 chapters without mentioning women. Women are really important. There should be more of them involved in whatever it is that we think we do."

Some of the recommendations are real side-slappers. I particularly liked 6: "Without compromising existing support, Labor should broaden its support base by improving its standing with economically insecure, low-income working families, groups within the Christian community and Australians living in regional and rural Australia."

Enjoy.

[pietillidie]

Anyone got a quick summation of where things are at? Anything unusual happening? (E.g., someone genuinely trying to improve something).

[#26]

[stui magpie]

[David]

These recent text message leaks about Morrison (first Berejiklian, now Joyce) strike me as pretty puerile. Is there anyone out there who doesn’t know by now that this is how politicians speak about their colleagues behind their backs? Particularly after the last fifteen years? The leaks themselves might suggest that there’s some internal move to destabilise Morrison, but even on that front it seems pretty weak and ineffectual, and arguably only makes the politicians sending the messages come off worse to the general public.

[stui magpie]

I read an article this morning that hearkened back to the infamous Andrew Peacock/ Jeff Kennett conversation about John Howard.

[David]

After their dodgy "tactical" cave-in on the religious discrimination bill, Labor have voted in favour of a couple of terrible government bills in recent days:

• Expanding the "character test" for deportation: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/16/labor-will-not-oppose-visa-cancellation-character-test-bill-kristina-keneally-says
• Bringing in mandatory minimum sentencing for firearms trafficking offences:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/17/labor-helps-pass-coalition-firearms-bill-after-lower-house-ambush

Both of these, note, are policies that the ALP has recently opposed and offered detailed (and good) reasons as to why. Here they are just last month on why the "character test" shouldn't be expanded: https://7news.com.au/news/immigration/labor-greens-oppose-migration-changes-c-5479819
And a couple of years back on why mandatory minimum sentencing for firearms trafficking charges is a bad idea: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-26/fact-check-did-labor-oppose-the-government-gun-reforms/11003182

The reason they're voting in favour of them now is totally cynical: basically, the government sees them as issues on which, by having them voted down, it can paint Labor as "soft on national security" and "soft on crime", so Labor sees it as a tactical victory to vote alongside the government and avoid being "wedged" (the word they like to use for "being forced to stand up for something you believe in that might cost you politically"). This Twitter thread sums it up well: https://twitter.com/NickMcKim/status/1493742369216233484

So even the government doesn't seem to think these laws are needed, because they're only proposing them as an election strategy. And Labor definitely doesn't think they're needed, because they've already told us why they're not. Yet these bills are getting sent through to the senate anyway and potentially being passed into law, because apparently the two parties are currently locked in a game of chicken in which people's lives and wellbeing are considered expendable. Isn't democracy great?

[Pies4shaw]

Democracy is great. It's the universal franchise that's the problem. If idiots weren't allowed to vote, this stuff wouldn't be possible, there would be no "wedge" issues - and the LNP would have no seats in Parliament.

[David]

I guess the trouble is that most people think that the people who believe the opposite of them are idiots, and there's no real way of objectively arbitrating who's right (IQ? Academic qualifications? Lived experience?). Also, any attempt to reduce franchise generally ends up benefiting the wealthy and powerful at the expense of poor, less educated or otherwise marginalised people. As a case in point, I suspect the Republicans would have no hope of winning elections in the US if voting was mandatory and available to all adults; stopping "idiots" from voting is one of their primary strategies.

There's no easy answer to stop politics from being so short-sighted and self-serving, but I think it lies in a) structural reform (think: radically reformed donation laws, an ICAC, media ownership reform, meaningful penalties for lying to the public, sending all Labor Party MPs to reeducation camps, etc.) and b) better communication and engagement from progressive parties, who really can't complain if politicians with as little charisma as Peter Dutton are being listened to more than they are. A bit of left populism probably wouldn't go astray ...

[Pies4shaw]

You thought I might be serious? That's almost scary. Franchise of 1 and all that.

[#26]